CHAPTER VI. 



A summer's cruise to northern LABRADOR. 

 I. From Boston to Henley Harbor. 



In the spring of 1864, Mr. William Bradford, the well- 

 known marine artist of New York, organized a party to 

 cruise along the coast of Labrador, and if possible to 

 reach Hudson's Strait, for the purpose of painting ice- 

 bergs and arctic scenery. After having previously spent 

 a summer on the southern coast, with no opportunity of 

 extended explorations, it seemed rare good fortune to 

 make one of a party bound for the Moravian settle- 

 ments, and possibly Cape Chidley. 



On the 4th of June, at 10.15 a.m., the fast schooner 

 Benjamin S. Wright, Captain Brown, with two pilots, 

 Capt. Ichabod Handy of Fair Haven, Mass., for the 

 northern coast, and Capt. French for the southern shore, 

 a Norwegian mate and two deck hands, with a cook and 

 two cabin boys, carrying a party of fourteen gentlemen 

 comprising lawyers, clergymen, naturalists, sportsmen, 

 and pleasure-seekers, left the Philadelphia Packet Pier, 

 Boston. Owing to an easterly wind a tug towed us 

 down to the Narrows, where we spread our canvas, and 

 beat down to Provincetown for the purpose of buying a 

 whaleboat, making harbor there at 9.30 in the evening. 



Spending Sunday at Provincetown, where we visited 

 some friends in the coast-guard, several of whom after- 

 wards distinguished themselves in the war of the Rebel- 



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